July 4, 2014

Guillermo Del Toro's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS Getting Picked-Up By Legendary In The Future?

It's starting to look like the recent Legendary Pictures/Universal Pictures deal is just a giant collaboration between the studios and writer-director Guillermo del Toro. The two companies are already partnering on del Toro's Crimson Peak and Pacific Rim 2. The director confirms to WallStreetJournal that Legendary is still interested in making his adaptation of At The Mountains of Madness.

"That’s exactly what I discussed with them. I said to them, that’s the movie that I would really love to do one day, and it’s still expensive, it’s still … I think that now, with the way I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic. There’s basically one or two scenes in the book that people don’t remember that are pretty graphic. Namely, for example, the human autopsy that the aliens do, which is a very shocking moment. But I think I can find ways of doing it. We’ll see. It’s certainly a possibility in the future. Legendary was very close to doing it at one point, so I know they love the screenplay. So, we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll happen. It’s certainly one of the movies I would love to do."

Originally, del Toro was fighting with Universal to get a hard-R rating for the horror film based on iconic story by H.P Lovecraft. He even had Tom Cruise attached for the lead role, and Ron Perlman set for a supporting role. Guillermo sounds a bit less concerned about caving-in and making it PG-13, since the ratings standards are seemingly relaxed when it comes to sci-fi/fantasy movies.

I'm sure the studio also paused production because Ridley Scott's Prometheus took a lot of influence from the story. So, having some space between the releases should help the film actually getting made. We know that Pacific Rim 2 is up next for Guillermo, but it's uncertain when he could get-back to making Mountains.